Drenlin
Active Member
It's more tradition/familiarity than anything. There was a time that macs actually were better, but not anymore. Neither system has a real advantage.
Mac vrs PC
- Thread starter Deadwater
- Start date
It's more tradition/familiarity than anything. There was a time that macs actually were better, but not anymore. Neither system has a real advantage.
Izombie247
New Member
Mac sux... It may have so called good graphics but I don't think they make ALL the games for mac. I would go with PC.
Izombie247
New Member
You can't just lay out a bunch of pros and cons like that.. All computers have problems and can be caused by a million diff things. Oh the one guy about all the so called BIG concerts.. That's not true at all. In fact when it comes to music and sound.. PC's are waaaaaaay more customizable.
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tlarkin
VIP Member
This thread is super old, filled with fail and bad information....
When I was a subcontractor for a tech firm, I was the exclusive IT guy for every recording studio and 5 independent record labels in the greater KC area and in Lawrence as well.
95% of their technology was all Mac based. Audio recording and rendering, all the way to their office computers.
Why? Personal preference and overall cost of ownership, is why the Mac is better. Macs now have a 22% consumer market share in the USA meaning 1 out of every 5 consumers that buys a computer, buys a Mac.
When I was a subcontractor for a tech firm, I was the exclusive IT guy for every recording studio and 5 independent record labels in the greater KC area and in Lawrence as well.
95% of their technology was all Mac based. Audio recording and rendering, all the way to their office computers.
Why? Personal preference and overall cost of ownership, is why the Mac is better. Macs now have a 22% consumer market share in the USA meaning 1 out of every 5 consumers that buys a computer, buys a Mac.
Drenlin
Active Member
When was this, exactly? IIRC, the PPC macs are the ones that were actually better at it. Nowadays it's a tossup. Most recording schools teach both platforms. Linux is gaining ground as well... SAE even had some open-source stuff in their curriculum for a while.
tlarkin
VIP Member
Power PC chips were rubbish and IBM could not produce them fast enough for the expanding market share. The switch to x86 was a very smart move by Apple. PPC is really only super beneficial in very closed and embedded systems, like consoles or platforming servers.
What a school teaches and what a business uses is not mutually exclusive. The reason studios buy macs is because the overall cost of ownership is less than a PC. Most studios will use the same Mac rig for 5+ years at full capacity. You won't see many PCs lasting 5 years with out upgrades, because Windows is the worst OS at managing resources.
Open source. Meh, the problem is crappy driver support, and the higher level of knowledge needed to make things work. I don't see you dumping a ton of money on digi or even like motu hardware sets and try to get open source drivers to maybe work, when they work native in OS X or Windows.
The main studio I worked at a lot had a 1st gen Xeon Mac Pro, which was out in 2006. 4 years later they are using the same hardware, with zero problems and zero hardware upgrades with the newest software with no performance hits. They will probably get another 2 to 3 years out of it before they need to buy a new system. Sure, they dropped like $3k on a high end recording rig, and yes my buddies that recorded there had songs with well over 200+ tracks of audio on it, but it performs like a champ. Try to do that with a PC and have it last 6 years, and have zero down time. Of course that studio stiffed me on my last invoice so they can die in a fire now, and I don't care if their crap breaks anymore because they owe me money, but that is beside the point.
Plus, Windows has one single point of failure called the registry, which is dumb from any efficiency standpoint you look at.
I'd like to see lots more Linux and Unix users out there, but with my latest experience trying to get HDMI audio out to work in Linux, I highly doubt I see any audio engineer try to go through what I did to make it work, and my audio still is not working 100%. I had to manually compile drivers and install them, which while not the hardest thing in the world, but how many music engineers are going to play at the command line? Linux lacks there with out of box support for hardware, that is just the truth of it unfortunately...
Drenlin
Active Member
here we go again...
Maybe it wasn't the PPC's then? Whatever the difference was back then, it's not there now. It's been a while since that conversation, and it was all over my head back then...but the two guys I was talking to have both been in recording engineers since the 70's. I trust what they say, and have heard similar things mirrored on A/E forums.
No, but the folks that teach at the SAE schools have generally been in the industry for a long time. If they're teaching something, it's because they know it will be useful.
Yes, you will. Last time my band recorded, we were using a 6 year old HP workstation with absolutely no modifications save the sound card. Granted, we only ever used 8-10 tracks, but it still worked fine. Hell, my little brother is recording right now (literally) using an Optiplex with a Northwood Celeron in it...it handles 8 tracks at once with no problems. Audio recording doesn't really advance in system requirements as fast as other multimedia types do.
Oh I know it's not on a level with the other two yet, but still...when it works, it really works. Ubuntu Studio as a whole can do some really amazing things.
As long as you don't buy a crappy computer, I don't see why it shouldn't last 6+ years as well...like I said before, I've personally seen and used a 6 year old HP, which still ran like a top. This was nearly a year ago...AFAIK he's still using it.
No argument there, but it does allow for some really good tweaks.
I hate when crap like that happens. It's always Audio too...I tried for 3 months to get sound working on my fiancee's old PII Thinkpad, to no avail.
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bomberboysk
Active Member
The problem is alot of the major audio and video software out there is OSX based stuff...
tlarkin
VIP Member
When you go to school, they mostly teach the PC and Windows platforms period. Even when you start to study system administration, they barely touch Linux and Unix and they have a decent share in the server market. Same goes for Novell and Citrix. I don't see them really getting into those platforms other than covering the basics.
I am going to assume most audio school teach pro tools over almost anything else, since it is the most widely used.
I have and still have some, around over a dozen recording studios and they all almost exclusively use Macs and still do to this day. The reason is, the total cost of ownership is way lower. What happens when you get a virus on your PC and you lose work?
Now some of them did use Windows, but it was for only 1 app or 1 thing that windows did, and most of them just run virtual machines of Windows now so they can get the best of both worlds.
Want to use logic, gotta use a Mac, a Mac can run every single app and plug in out there period, so it is the better investment. If you absolutely hate Mac, then get a PC.
I am going to assume most audio school teach pro tools over almost anything else, since it is the most widely used.
I have and still have some, around over a dozen recording studios and they all almost exclusively use Macs and still do to this day. The reason is, the total cost of ownership is way lower. What happens when you get a virus on your PC and you lose work?
Now some of them did use Windows, but it was for only 1 app or 1 thing that windows did, and most of them just run virtual machines of Windows now so they can get the best of both worlds.
Want to use logic, gotta use a Mac, a Mac can run every single app and plug in out there period, so it is the better investment. If you absolutely hate Mac, then get a PC.
Drenlin
Active Member
Actually, the students there all use macbooks, and SAE supported Ardour during its development. It's really a good program. Damned expensive though...
If they lose work because they got a virus, then they aren't being very professional. You should never, under any circumstances, leave your workstation connected to the internet. Updates only.
Logic is good, but it's hardly a deciding factor...you can get the same end result with many other programs. Software(and outboard hardware) support for both platforms has improved and diversified so much that it doesn't matter so much what software you use. The mixer, mics, and interface have a much bigger impact.
And yes, you can run Windows software on a Mac, but you either have to use a VM or Boot Camp, and you have to buy windows. Nobody is going to buy a mac just so they can run windows on it...there's no point in that.
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PunterCam
Active Member
Yes, but like you said, that's 8-10 tracks. Your phone has enough power to record 8-10 tracks.
One of the main reasons macs are used in the music recording industry is compatibility. Most recording studios use macs. An amazing number of professional musicians use macs. With a mac I can immediately access a PC formatted hard-drive, which I can't do with Windows - and I've had years of experience with the 'solution' (macdrive) which is useless at best. A powerful mac will run for half a decade with barely any maintenance and slowdown - a windows PC just won't, or if it does it'll be in the minority. Software writers and hardware designers know exactly what they're designing for with macs, so stability problems are rare. I can call up a hardware manufacturer, say what my computer and o/s are, and get a solution. With a PC you just don't know, and customer support is always that bit more vague, at least in my experience.
I also know for a fact, that if my osx system drive drops the ball, I can just put in a recent copy on a backup h/d (or have one already on another drive in the computer) and be back up to speed in 1 minute, and despite the best instruction, I've never managed to do that quickly and smoothly with windows.
Of course, not every professional will agree with me - I think Mark Knofler's studio, British Grove in London, uses PCs, and it's probably one of the top studios on the planet now. But for the lone engineer with a modest setup, a mac is piece of mind worth buying.
tlarkin
VIP Member
you don't need to be online to get a virus, you can get from that attaches itself to removable storage, like a thumb drive, or if a client gives you a file that is infected from their computer.
It is not really professional to no look at the total cost of ownership, and I have had plenty of recording studios not want me to build back up systems for them, because they thought it was a waste. One guy in Lawrence I billed about $500 or so in data recovery fees, because his drive died and he had no back ups.
Recording studios hardly follow best practices, might as well get them a system with no viruses.
It is not really professional to no look at the total cost of ownership, and I have had plenty of recording studios not want me to build back up systems for them, because they thought it was a waste. One guy in Lawrence I billed about $500 or so in data recovery fees, because his drive died and he had no back ups.
Recording studios hardly follow best practices, might as well get them a system with no viruses.
Drenlin
Active Member
You're much less likely to get a virus from removable storage, though...especially if you have a good security program that scans removable devices when they connect.
I wouldn't want to record at a studio that was as unprofessional as the ones you described...a good one should have, at the very least, a fault-tolerant RAID array and multiple external drives, all with the same data backed up. The rest of them, the less professional ones, really aren't worth the time when you can pay the same amount of money to get equipment and record yourself with unlimited studio time and a similar end result. (of course, not all contracts allow that, which sucks...)
I wouldn't want to record at a studio that was as unprofessional as the ones you described...a good one should have, at the very least, a fault-tolerant RAID array and multiple external drives, all with the same data backed up. The rest of them, the less professional ones, really aren't worth the time when you can pay the same amount of money to get equipment and record yourself with unlimited studio time and a similar end result. (of course, not all contracts allow that, which sucks...)
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PunterCam
Active Member
Very very few studios use RAIDs. Most don't even bother with a UPS. I've certainly never been in one that uses anything other than a single hard drive - and often just a firewire drive, and I've been everywhere the UK has to offer.
tlarkin
VIP Member
Recording studios are all a bunch of cheap skates, and they hated when I told them if they wanted to be serious and professional they need to spend some money. None of them use best practices either.
I would not want virus scanner stuff running on my main rig when I am rendering multiple tracks of digital audio.
salvage-this
Active Member
Why? What is a backround program going to do?
tlarkin
VIP Member
eat up precious resources and cause disk I/O
Drenlin
Active Member
Oh I know it...the music industry is pretty tough to make a profit in. The thing is, not all big name bands do their work in a studio...the ones working at home are usually a bit smarter about things.
Also, Audio isn't like video...it doesn't take that long to process everything. If you're using a DAW, you usually apply the effects and tweaks one at a time, one track at a time...or in many cases even in real time as the song plays. Adjusting the whole mix doesn't happen as often(though it's definitely a factor) If you're using analog or outboard equipment, which is still VERY common, then all the computer needs to do is record the final or near-final product in digital form, which is relatively easy, and possibly control some of the equipment. The longest you should have to wait on the computer to work is when you're waiting on the file to be converted from a project to an audio file. Having a virus scanner in the background would make almost no difference in productivity. You're not going to be plugging in external drives while you're working anyway...
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